Spirited Away The Alternate Opening
by DBAllred
Summary: Dusted this oldie off and put it back up. It's best if you're an expert in Ghibli and Spirited Away
1. The Human World

Spirited Away - the Alternate Beginning   
  
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Preface   
  
I have a very short attention span. Right now, I'm finishing the last chapter of my other fan fic, Sen to Chihiro no Tsuzuki. Unfortunately, I feel the chapter is going to be far too long and it's too specific to be broken up. I need a break, so I'll try a bit of comic relief with this. It will be two chapters long and is an alternate beginning to the film based on the premise that Miyazaki wasn't heartened by the lack of people taking his message to heart. Unfortunately, Miyazaki wasn't free to rewrite the beginning, so they hired a protege of Mel Brooks to rewrite and redirect the change.   
  
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Chapter 1   
  
Whilst Chihiro looked almost lifelessly across the bouquet she received as a going-away present, a adult male voice from the front seat breaks her mood. "Chihiro. Mou sugu da yo."   
  
"Daddy, speak English--this story is in English."   
  
"Sorry, Chihiro. We're almost..."   
  
"I heard you the first time, Daddy--you don't have to repeat yourself. Sheesh!" Chihiro settled back into her well-rehearsed, "I'm resigned to this fate" pose.   
  
"Hora... uhh... Look! There's your new school."   
  
Without looking, Chihiro replied, "Two or three floors, right? Clock tower in the middle, right? Playground out front, right? Seen one, seen them all."   
  
Her mother, also in the front seat, piped in, "Actually it's only one floor--but it looks OK."   
  
Chihiro gasped. "Only ONE floor? What kind of town are you dragging us to, daddy?" She wiggled her way up to the car's window to look. She made a quaint hand gesture toward the school, then reassumed her position. She had learned a lot of quaint mannerisms on the family vacation to New York the previous year.   
  
The family car made a right turn off Highway 21 and continued up a steep incline past the film title graphic and up toward the top of the hill. Mom spoke up and asked dad, "Dear?"   
  
"Yes?"   
  
"Was that graphic we just passed under in Japanese or English?"   
  
"It was Japanese."   
  
"Oh. That explains it, then."   
  
"Explains what?"   
  
"Why you and Chihiro look like you're blushing. In fact, the whole world seems to have a reddish tint."   
  
Suddenly the paved road came to an end.   
  
"Are? Michi wo machigaeta..."   
  
"Daddy..."   
  
"Sorry. Habit. I must have missed a turn somewhere."   
  
Mom looked up the hill. "Isn't that our house? The purple one up there?"   
  
"Our house is blue," dad replied.   
  
"Well, not any more--not with this red tint."   
  
"I'll bet we can get there if we drive just a little further."   
  
Mom suggested, "There's a man by the road 100 meters behind us. Why don't we back up and ask directions?"   
  
"Yeah. ...Right." Replied dad, indignantly. "Why don't you get out that map and find out where we are?" he continued sarcastically.   
  
"Yeah. ...Right." Replied mom, smiling, understanding the sarcasm. "I guess we can afford to lose a little time getting lost."   
  
"Chihiro, somewhat buoyed by the good-natured quarrel, got up and started looking around. She looked out the car window as it started down the road. She saw some strange boxes overgrown with moss by the road. "What are those strange house-like things?" Mom replied, "Ishi no hokora..."   
  
Chihiro interrupted. "You too, mom? English, ENGLISH."   
  
"Well, I don't know what to call them in English, Chihiro. You don't see many of them in the western world. Anyway, they're houses of the gods."   
  
As the car continued down the shaded and unpaved road, Chihiro spotted a large gray figure with a big grin standing beside the road next to what appeared to be a bus stop sign. "I'm in the wrong story," she thought to herself, half-expecting to see a large feline bus pull up to the stop. Actually, she missed that sight by a full two minutes.   
  
The car was bearing down rapidly on a large red 'Mon' (not even we narrators can come up with a good English word for that) and father managed to stop it just in time before hitting a stone bollard that blocked the road.   
  
"What is it?" asked mom. "Bollards are placed in front of stores and malls to prevent drive-through smash-and-grab looting."   
  
"No, dear, not that--what's that big red thing in front of us? At least it LOOKS red, but with this tint it could actually be white."   
  
Chihiro knew this was going to be a difficult term to put into English and she was ready to pounce on father should he call it a 'mon.' Father sensed the upcoming pounce, gulped, and said, "It's a gate." Chihiro was deflated but not finished with her fun. "It doesn't look like a gate to me, daddy. Gates have hinges."   
  
Father got out of the car to get a closer look. Chihiro continued, "Gates open inward or outward..." He pronounced, "This is a pretty new structure. It's stucco and almost newly painted. Chihiro, undaunted, kept up: "a gate will fall down if you take away the fence it's attached to."   
  
Mom got out of the car and joined father. Chihiro, realizing nobody was paying attention to her pithiness, got out and joined mom and dad. Father, with a greater hidden agenda in mind, suggested, "Why don't we take a little peek inside?" Mom saw through the ruse. If they turned around right then, father would be forced to admit he took the wrong way and should have asked directions. If he goes in, he can marvel at something, everybody can feel that side trip wasn't wasted, and he can then go back to the car in victory instead of shame. She decided to play along. "Sure, we can go in, but the movers are supposed to be here today."   
  
"They have the keys," dad replied, "and can upack themselves."   
  
"That's true, I guess," she replied. "-You actually gave them the keys?" she thought to herself, but voiced, "I guess a short little look-see won't hurt. Chihiro?"   
  
"No way. I don't go into things that are called what they are not--and that's not a gate," still trying to revive the argument. She stood next to the bollard. It looked like a smaller version of the character she saw on the way. Chihiro leaned toward the bollard and asked without expecting a reply, "and where's the little white one?" She saw her parents entering the, uh, mon. Mom said, "Chihiro, you can wait in the car. Just then an acorn fell from the bollard and Chihiro felt very uneasy. "Wait for me," she cried to her parents, as she ran to catch up with them... 


	2. The Other World

Chapter 2   
  
The, uh, Fushigi-na Town   
  
The passageway through the, uh, mon was long and dark. A faint opening was visible up ahead, but it wasn't an opening into the sunlight. Chihiro grumbled, "This looks--wow! cool echo--more like a tunnel than a gate to me. Are you sure this isn't a tunnel instead?"   
  
"If it makes you happy," mom replied with sigh.   
  
Chihiro started making clapping sounds and stomping her feet hard for the echo effect. "BWAHAHA," she belted from the depths of her lungs. She was quite pleased with the reverberating sound it made. "Mommy-ommy-ommy, how-how-how much-ch-ch longer-ger are-are we-we-we going to be? to be? to be?"   
  
"Cut that out Chihiro," mom scolded. "This tunnel doesn't have that kind of echo."   
  
Dad contributed to the conversation, "It's more like a karaoke machine set on the 'really bad singer' setting kind of echo." The three giggled. Mom seemed intrigued by dad's choice of simile. She asked, "What setting do you use?" Dad replied, "I just use straight amplification..." It was too late. Chihiro smiled. "Busssted..."   
  
Momentarily, the three entered a large chamber. "This doesn't look like a tunnel," mom noted. "It doesn't look like a gate," dad exclaimed. "It doesn't look like a 'mon' either," Chihiro said under her breath. "It kinda looks like a station or a terminal of some sort. Sunlight filtered in the room from windows high aloft and from the open doorway, which was not aloft. A familiar sound faded in and out. "A train!" Chihiro felt there might be some civilization around her home in the "barren hinterlands" after all. Mom seemed relieved, too. "There might be a station nearby--with shops." She looked at dad with a glinty smile, "There might also be a karaoke bar or two."   
  
Dad escaped out into the light and looked around. Mom and Chihiro followed shortly. "Yappari, uh, Just as I thought," he announced, "it's an old amusement park." He stopped, turned, looked straight at the audience and said, "Just in case you're another one of those brainless film critics, let me make it clear that I *said* it's an amusement park. That does not mean it *is* an amusement park. Got that?" He resumed his conversation with the family. "Let's go a little further, ok?" Mom was enjoying the nice weather and beautiful scenery, which was just as pretty as a Miyazaki cel background--with a slight red tint. "I should have brought sandwiches from the car."   
  
Chihiro was not too keen on this idea. Her parents wandered ahead anyway. "What!!? are you still going on?" The wind howled in from behind her. "Hey!" She gave up and rejoined them. Just as they crossed over some stones hosting a trickle of water, dad caught the smell of something good to eat. "Smell that? Buttered popcorn!" Mom noticed, too. "You're right. smells great." Chihiro tried her best to keep up, but it was a task climbing over the the stones. The aroma of buttered popcorn led them to the edge of a town. Following the scent, they wandered deeper into town. Mom was noticing the businesses lining the streets. "There sure are a lot of theaters here." Dad added, "Theaters and video rental places." Chihiro added, "and Computer Software stores." Dad noted, "There's a store selling nothing but slightly used car stereos." They wandered into a store advertising all CDs for a dollar and DVDs for five dollars.   
  
"Wow! Look at this!" Dad exclaimed. "A complete collection of Kurosawa DVDs for only fifty bucks!" Mom said, "They go for over a thousand in Tokyo." Chihiro eyed a complete boxed set of Ghibli DVDs. "What's this? a boxed set? There are no legal boxed sets." Chihiro figured it out. "Daddy, all this stuff is counterfeit. That's how they can sell it so cheaply."   
  
Dad replied, "Sure, Chihiro. They're just as good as the originals, and a lot cheaper to boot."   
  
Chihiro protested, "But the distributor will lose money..."   
  
"The distributor is rich. The studio is rich. We're not rich," father rationalized.   
  
Mom came from the back of the store, "Honey, there's a viewing room in the back with a large-screen TV. We can preview the films before we buy them."   
  
"Or NOT buy them," he winked. "Let's go pop one in the player to see the quality."   
  
"But there's nobody here," pleaded Chihiro, "let's put the stuff back and leave."   
  
Father sat in the comfortable chair in front of the screen. "Nonsense. I've got credit cards and cash."   
  
Mom sat in the chair next to him and popped the all-region, pre-release DVD of Neko no Ongaeshi in the player. "Look, honey, they even have a trough full of popcorn for us to munch on."   
  
Chihiro, disgusted, left her parents and started out the front door of the shop. Meanwhile, in her quarters high atop her bath house, an elderly omnipotent sorceress and three heads bouncing from the floor to get a view of her crystal ball were watching the happenings with keen interest. "Heh heh. Two down--one to go. I wonder what I can offer to tempt that little girl?"   
  
Chihiro stood in the middle of the street. It didn't look the same as she remembered seeing it before she entered the store. The street now took on the appearance of a mall. She passed right by a 'Hello Kitty' store without stopping. One of the bouncing heads, dismayed, passed a Thousand Yen note to each of the other heads--a difficult task to do with one's mouth while bouncing. The head who wagered on 'Snoopy Town' was similarly disappointed. Chihiro stopped in front of the software store and looked in the window. The third head was bouncing up and down very excitedly. "Oi Oi!" The old sorceress leaned forward. "A nerd?" Chihiro saw the latest Microsoft Software Development System--and it was only five bucks. "They're selling everything too cheaply. Something's not quite right with this town," she thought. She looked up at a sign arching over the street. "Ningen Gai? - That means human quarter. What's that all about?"   
  
She wandered further up the street to the end, where a bridge marked the end of the human quarter. From that point, she saw a huge building with a large corporate flag out front. It was a bath house, but Chihiro wasn't in the mood for reality. "I'll bet that's an Internet auction site," she thought to herself, "and I just passed through their showroom." Just then, she heard the familiar sound of a train passing beneath the bridge. She climbed on the rail to get a good look when she saw a boy, about 12 years old, standing nearby. "You shouldn't be here," he warned.   
  
His voice startled Chihiro. "Ewww. How come you have the voice of a thirty year-old?"   
  
"Casting?" he offered. The sun started setting rapidly, as it usually does in Fushigi-na places. The boy continued, "You need to leave here quickly. I'll distract them."   
  
Chihiro panicked. It was getting dark VERY quickly. The town started lighting up. Eerie shapes of spirits started moving about the streets and in the shops. She ran to find her parents. The video store was lit up. She ran past the apparitions browsing the aisles to the back room where...   
  
...she found two large, clothed pigs gouging themselves on the popcorn in the trough in front of the widescreen TV. "Mommy! Daddy! Where are you?" She ran out into the street.   
  
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"What do you think, Jim?"   
  
"It'll work, Mike. The rest of the movie can be spliced seemlessly after that point."   
  
"What about product placement? Audi Japan got their money's worth."   
  
"Well, we should at least get Sanrio and Snoopy Town to go along, or we'll need to run this by legal."   
  
"Agreed."   
  
"Anyway..."   
  
"Yes?"   
  
"What about a sequel?"   
  
"I like it."   
  
"...or a TV series?"   
  
"What if Ghibli doesn't go along?"   
  
"We can change the story and rewrite the whole thing. Make it about a girl, her elder sister, and maybe a few loveable aliens."   
  
"Cool." 


End file.
